My mad fat diary: It's nice to revisit a time before Facebook

We're under pressure to share every thought and feeling as it happens these
days, as if you don’t really exist unless it's published on social media,
that it's lovely to return to the pre-Facebook paper diary, writes Katy
Brand.

My teenage diary was booby-trapped. Not with a trip wire, or suspended bucket of cow manure, or even a string tied to a rifle trigger.

No, it was booby-trapped with what I thought was the most powerful weapon I could employ – a passive-aggressive little note inside the front cover asking anyone who found it to look deep into their own conscience and ask themselves, ‘am I really the sort of person who reads someone else’s most private thoughts? If so, go ahead,’ I wrote, ‘go ahead and read all you like, if you can live with yourself afterwards, if you can look me in the eye once you have replaced it under my bed, if you can stand to look YOURSELF in the eye knowing what you have become. A choice is before you: what kind of person do you want to be?’

Yes, this was the sheer level of narcissism and self-importance, combined with a hilariously misplaced sense of justice that I prided myself on at the age of 14. I don’t know where these diaries are now – I’m fairly sure I threw them away, but the thought of reading them now, or anyone getting anywhere near them makes me want to die of cringe.

So I am full of admiration for Rae Earl, who turned hers into a bestselling book,‘My Mad Fat Teenage Diary’. It has just been made into a TV show, ‘My Mad Fat Diary’,on E4 starring Sharon Rooney as Rae herself – an overweight, sexually frustrated girl who starts her journey to find some meaning to life in a mental hospital, and leaves it to discover that the outside world isn’t much saner.

I read Rae’s book, which is set in 1990s Lincolnshire, before it became a TV series, and although I winced with recognition a number of times, and marvelled at her bravery in publishing it, I was also very aware that her teenage musings were a great deal more interesting than mine.

Without wishing to sound all uptight about the onward march of progress, it’s nice to revisit a time before Facebook, where one’s embarrassing private thoughts would be shared with a lined page of a notebook with a padlock on it, and nobody else – an actual padlock. How quaint.

There is such a pressure now to share every moment, every thought, every feeling, almost as it happens, as if you don’t really exist unless it is published on some sort of social media platform, that sometimes I worry teenagers are not giving themselves enough room to be idiots in private, as so much is now offered up for public consumption.

People may say that their Facebook page is their way of expressing themselves, but a timeline is not a diary; it is a continuation of a sort of public persona, and children bring the playground home with them now – a diary used to be a form of private relief, a place where you could record your thoughts, however stupid, and avoid judgement so long as no one found it.

The creation of one’s own little world, where you set the rules and you decide what’s fair and what isn’t can teach you to be your own best friend. It can also teach you some sense of perspective, as you review former entries (alone) and see where you went wrong, or maybe jumped the gun or treated someone badly.

In the safety of your own space, you can learn by yourself to correct your mistakes, and the self-sufficiency and self-possession this engenders is very valuable later in life.

There’s dignity in a diary, where your mind isn’t splayed out for all to see and share. And for those teens who do keep their most vulnerable feelings off the internet, it is still important to get them out of their heads – looking at some external piece of writing can help tease out what’s really going on – it doesn’t have to be either in your head or online – these are not the only two options.

I hope this brilliant book and TV show inspires some teens to start private diaries, if they haven’t already.

I’m not so Luddite as to suggest that these diaries have to be in paper form – perhaps there should be some sort of ‘journal app’, where they can tap their innermost thoughts and feelings onto their iPads or laptops.

The format doesn’t matter; it’s the privacy that’s the point. We live our lives so publicly now – it’s expected that everyone from the quietest child in the classroom to the biggest, brashest celebrity is constantly sharing in order to legitimise their existence.

But let’s hear it for privacy, for keeping something back, for not sharing – for having the confidence to say nothing every so often. Ironically, in making her diaries public, Rae Earl is showing us the value in being private.